MY OWN WALKING - August Journal 2025

 

There are days when I believe I'm clearheaded and can truly see myself for who I really am. I find I'm  internally giving myself a good ticking off, and castigating my reflection -'What a fraud you are'. Any notion of my Buddhist practice being even moderately effective, becomes viewed as a cloak of self deceit I've hidden behind. I'm just effectively faking it all out of habit. And this day, of all days, that crumbling facade has suddenly been ripped away for all to see. In the harsh raking light of this coruscating self view, nothing could survive its instinct to purge. Its one brief moment where you contact 'the right winger nut job within' and have a self destructive riot on your hands. If you should let it.

This is one manifestation of religious self doubt, accompanied by the added frisson of some self flagellation. And who doesn't get off on a bit of that? It takes the form of Religious Practice Imposter Syndrome. That the truth might actually be a little less stridently certain, seems in that moment entirely beside the point. However, there is always a grain of truth in any of our reactions, otherwise why else would we take them so seriously? But there is a loss of perspective, particularly of the broader reality, because we've become obsessively drawn into elements in 'our small story' as Koshin Paley Ellison calls it. 

Whatever I choose to spiritually practice, will always be imperfectly executed. It depends on the extent to which I allow myself to be taken in by my greediness for progress, by my self hatred ,or most likely some delusion in how I perceive myself, or want to be perceived by others. So the idea that my practice could be any good, becomes, at best, a semi-fraudulent assertion in my mind. Their is a desire for it to be perfect, and I become self critical because I still feel myself to be falling short in relation to the lofty distance of my ideal of perfection. 

My practice is rarely as good or bad as what I'm saying it is, or would like to believe it is. It is never absolutely dreadful nor absolutely perfect, but is simply where I am at in this moment. One can unintentionally crucify oneself on the cross of perfection, or the lack of it. Whether religious or secular our obsession with the pursuit of perfection can literally be the death of life. After thousands of years of non-achievement of absolute perfection, you'd think we'd hang a bit more loose with it. But no, people are regularly hung out to dry at the slightest ethical laxity, or simply holding an opinion you do not yourself approve of. Often by people who are far from exemplary themselves. But then, its much easier to find fault in, and to punish others, than face one's own short comings publicly with the same frankly puritan fervor.

Spiritual practice could be seen as an imaginative fictional travelogue, with constant course corrections, as we take this journey to see how well we can traverse this path, to make some progress and hopefully transform ourselves. Personal ethics is then, always in a constantly evolving state of being a work in progress. If I do these things I may eventually become a better person all round, whilst still not yet being perfectly Enlightened. So any practice I'm doing may indeed appear to others to be falling short. But I am slowly being enlightened by it, even if I can feel a bit of a fraud occasionally, when time seems to be dragging its heals.

None of this has to be seen as a bad thing. We are always a mix of often quite contrary impulses, that makes any practice we are doing seem such a pretense. Yes, that means its fractionally a lie, but that  also implies its fractionally true too. Gradually overtime, if we maintain our efforts, the default scales will shift from being weighted towards 'its all a lie'  towards being 'its all true'. We are always, as they say ' faking it till we make it'. 

But all this, undoubtedly, makes handling the Religious Practice Imposter Syndrome tricky, when it does arise. Because, yeah, I'll be honest, after thirty plus years of practice, I'm still 'faking it ' a lot of the time. I fall short of the ideal constantly. Our aspirations for perfection are not remotely helpful, and these often lead to the worst sort of rigidly inflexible personal practices. Believe me I know, from personal experience. To borrow a line from Shakespearee's Macbeth, we all suffer from 'vaulting ambition which o'erleaps itself'. In other words we really are getting way way ahead of ourselves here. 

( Is there a place for ambition in the spiritual life? - Discuss.) 

And yet, and yet, lets take one step back and take in a slightly larger perspective here. We tend to operate in a world of practice built around the dualities, of this verses that, likes verses dislikes, good verses bad, perfect verses imperfect, I want this but not that, etc. But the Buddha was very clear that this human tendency to reduce everything to a moral conflict between states and ideas in opposition, ultimately will be shown to not be the whole truth of the matter. That these dualistic misconceptions are at root a delusion that subsequently poison all of our perceptions. Whilst we are still imperfect in our perceptions, whilst we are still deluded, its really hard to see that. I just want to get it right, but I'm not yet Enlightened, so aren't I getting it a teeny weeny bit - wrong? You can see how that might be a problem can't you?